A meeting between President Obama and House Republicans on Wednesday yielded no progress toward a deal that would prevent the U.S. from defaulting on its debt, and Republicans are now demanding that Obama take a more direct role in negotiations. “Unfortunately what we did not hear from the president is a specific plan of his to deal with the debt crisis,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, told reporters outside the White House. Twenty yards away, dozens of House Republicans were filing out of the 75-minute meeting and heading toward the buses that would take them back to Capitol Hill.
White House press secretary Jay Carney dubbed the discussions a “useful exercise.”
“This was not the forum, with that many people in the room, to put out proposals and spreadsheets and start negotiating details,” Carney said.
Carney noted that Obama already outlined $4 trillion in spending cuts over 12 years in March.
“The president’s leadership on this is very clear,” he said, pointing out that, under Obama’s direction, Vice President Joe Biden has been leading negotiations with congressional Republicans.
Democratic leaders will meet with Obama on Thursday as the Aug. 2 deadline to raise the government’s debt ceiling approaches. If the deadline is missed, the government could default on its loans. Republicans said they will agree to increase the government’s borrowing capacity only if Democrats agree to deeper spending cuts. But Obama is adamant that the two issues remain separate.
“It would be a mistake to directly link, tie, or hold hostage one to the other because of the absolute necessity of raising the debt ceiling,” Carney said.
Neither side budged during the meeting.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Republicans will seek spending cuts greater than any increase in borrowing capacity, which some estimates put at $2 trillion. Ahead of the Wednesday meeting, Boehner released a letter signed by 150 economists supporting his position.
Carney said it’s too early to draw those lines in the sand.
“You know, I can pull out letters also,” he said impatiently. “There is a vast array of evidence and a vast number of experts who can testify to the fact that playing chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States government is a bad idea.”
The difficulties both sides have had negotiating over the debt ceiling and spending cuts was perhaps best illustrated when House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., asked Obama to stop calling his proposal to cut Medicare spending a “voucher” plan.
“It’s been mis-described by the president,” Ryan said crisply. “So we simply described to him precisely what it is we’ve been proposing so that he hears from us how our proposal works so that in the future he won’t mischaracterize it.”
Less than an hour later in the White House briefing room, Carney retorted, “What you call it doesn’t change what it does and what it is. It is a voucher plan.”
